Karen Tkaczyk: Looking Back on the International Technical Translation Conference in Lisbon, Portugal

Posted by Karen Tkaczyk on June 8, 2010

The International Technical Translation Conference was held on May 28 and 29, in Lisbon, Portugal. Dr. Karen Tkaczyk, NITA’s President, traveled to Portugal to attend this conference where she gave a Technical Translation Workshop under the title: “From Soap to Drugs and Back, via QA and SOP’s”. Below she shares her impressions of the conference, which was organized by Tradulínguas (an international translation agency headquartered in Lisbon) in cooperation with the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (of the New University of Lisbon – Universidade Nova de Lisboa or UNL). Note: thanks to João Roque Dias of Tradulínguas, there’s a great photo-overview of the conference posted on Picasa.

Tower of Babel

Thirty-seven nationalities were represented by the 200 translators present at this two-day conference held in Lisbon on 28-29 May 2010. That alone made it a stimulating environment for any member of the T&I community, even before we consider the technical sessions. English was the language of almost all of the sessions, but the hallways and meeting areas exhibited great diversity. Conversations were sometimes held in several languages at once, it seemed. Many English dialects were represented, from both southern and northern hemispheres. There were people from many European countries, and from most of the Portuguese speaking countries. There was also a delegation from China.

Organizers TradulÍnguas are developing something of a reputation for putting on excellent conferences. Organizers João Roque Dias and Lina Gameiro had been very responsive and well-organized in the run up to the event, and it ran very smoothly, so they and their team are to be congratulated. It is worth mentioning that the coffee breaks, on-campus lunches, and conference dinner improved the overall experience in giving us a flavour of Portugal. Delicious ‘pastéis’, Portuguese pastries, were served during the breaks, and a lively, (dare I say loud, perhaps even boisterous as the evening wore on!) conference dinner was held at a location within easy walking distance of our hotels. I would highly recommend future TradulÍnguas events.

So what did I learn?

I had chosen to attend because of the specialized technical content, and combined it with a visit to my parents in the UK before travelling to Lisbon. I am a highly-specialized technical translator and I crave good training in the area. It is not easy to find such training, even if you are willing to travel. Medical translation, legal translation, even financial translation, are commonly catered for. Technical translation is not often the focus of conferences. Since this one sold out and had a waiting list, it suggests to me that there is a market for other similar events.

I arrived with decisions to make, as the program was two-track apart from keynote speakers. We had good choices available, as each time slot had a session on a technical subject, then there were other options on building your business and terminology management, for example, for those who wanted a more general program. There were sessions that were of direct relevance to my work, and several that were not directly relevant but left me with a sense of satisfaction afterwards. I felt ‘well-fed’ intellectually after the two days.

My conference began with a member of the in-house translation department at CERN in Geneva, Mathilde Fontanet, talking on the common difficulties of translating technical English. Oh, those noun pairs! As well as the huge value to the obvious ‘out of English’ audience, there was a lot of food for thought for those of us who work into English.

UN translator Prof. Marie-Josée de Saint Robert gave an excellent session on how terminology must be defined within the UN, in her case for work into French. It was an eye-opener to see how decisions must be taken. I think it is best explained by an example, which I hope I relate faithfully: in one area of automotive technology (as I recall the context was anti-lock brakes) manufacturers were using a variety of phrases to describe a new technological concept in English. The equivalent French phrase had to be defined for a new standard, and a study was made of the French phrases in common use. It was then important to consider whether those phrases were used exclusively by one auto-maker. Selecting that phrase would not do! So not only was the meaning of the terms important, but the accepted phrasing in the industry and the degree to which a phrase was accepted by only a part of the industry, before selecting an ‘official’ French translation.

I was looking forward to a session on translation for technical journalism, as it is an area in which I wish to develop my skills. This is a very hard area, as the translator must have both the technical skill set and be able to write excellent marketing copy. Presenter Steve Dyson met my expectations and may be the only translator I have ever met who is more specialized than I am! His narrow area was translation of naval defence related subject matter for that industry’s professionals, and his discussion of the issues involved in marketing technical subject matter was the highlight of the conference for me. His technique is emulation, and he immerses himself in that industry’s publications to build up his expertise.

A Belgian professor from University of Mons, Viviane Grisez, gave us a great session on how French scientists usually write English papers, giving insight into what to look out for in the area of revising English texts written by non-native speakers, which is a reasonably large field for scientific translators like me. Major areas of consideration were modal verbs and tense use, then other smaller issues that we all recognize were mentioned, such as hyphenation, or the difference between ‘make’ and ‘do’, and the dreaded ‘realise’.

There were a number of sessions on specific technical areas including high speed rail, bearings, my own session on the chemical industry, and a very popular session on translating manuals. There were also a number of more general sessions on tools, terminology and building a business. Renato Beninatto gave a lively presentation on the state of the translation industry and how old we all were – literally, but more importantly figuratively, in how we think about the business and they way it may change in the near future. The conference ended with sessions from the head of the Portuguese team at the European Commission, and the last Q&A was lively one that scratched the surface of the current ferocious debate on the potential reform of the Portuguese language.

And back to work…

This was a stimulating, well-run conference where I met many interesting people. It left me enthusiastic about my chosen niche in the profession, and eager to return to work. That is surely the mark of a great professional development event.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Tkaczyk Presents at Tradulí­nguas International Technical Translation Conference (Lisbon, Portugal)
2. GALA 2011 Conference in Lisbon, Portugal
3. Moving Toward a Better Freelance Translation Practice – by Karen Tkaczyk, PhD
4. STC / Technical Communication Summit (Atlanta, GA)
5. AMTA 2010 – IX Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas